Simon Rumble’s blog

I've just put a bunch of stuff on eBay, and I'm sure some of you might be interested.

A Roland Juno 106, one of the first ever MIDI analogue synthesizers. This sucker has a wonderful sound, but since I've finally admitted to myself that I have zero musical talent, it's time to clear it out of the house.

Lego Mindstorms was another of those purchases I wish I'd played with more. Loads of fun and all, this robotic lego stuff. But I never really had the time to get right into it. I bought this as soon as it was released in the US, and ended up getting raped on import duty when it went through Australian customs. You can program it in a number of languages developed outside of Lego.

Rather less geeky, we pulled this out of our bathroom during our renovations. It's gorgeous, but doesn't match our new decor. Would really suit someone doing up an old school bathroom in the period style. Absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I got a letter in today's Herald about my lack of faith in the delivery of this North-West metro the NSW government is promising. The bit they chopped off was: You'd be hard pressed to find Action for Transport 2010 on any NSW government web site. Now why do you think that might be?

Thanks to the legends at the National Library of Australia, I've managed to find it. That's right, you can see Action for Transport 2010 in all its undelivered glory.

A quick run through press release confirms what I said.

AIRPORT RAIL LINK

Opened on time, but due to exorbitant prices, patronage has been well down. If you live anywhere in the inner West, it's much faster and cheaper to catch a cab.

BONDI BEACH RAIL LINK

Killed. Bondi NIMBYs didn't want bogans from the Western Suburbs competing for space with Eastern Suburbs bogans, plus the important point that it was going to be a privatised railway, with associated huge ticket increases

PARRAMATTA RAIL LINK

Only got halfway, Chatswood to Epping, which completely defeated the purpose of allowing passengers from the Western Suburbs to get to major trip generators like Macquarie University and the growing North Ryde technology parks.

EPPING TO CASTLE HILL LINE

Never built. This new promised metro effectively re-announces it, but work won't start until 2010 which according to this press release was when it would be open.

HURSTVILLE TO STRATHFIELD RAIL LINK

Sunk without trace.

LIVERPOOL 'Y' LINK

Never heard of again.

LIVERPOOL TO PARRAMATTA TRANSITWAY

Built. But just remember, this is a glorified bus lane.

BLACKTOWN - WETHERILL PARK TRANSITWAY

Still on the drawing board, despite the touted 2006 opening date.

PARRAMATTA - BLACKTOWN TRANSITWAY

Still on the drawing board, despite the touted 2004 opening date

BLACKTOWN - CASTLE HILL TRANSITWAY

Still on the drawing board, despite the touted 2009 opening date

PARRAMATTA - ROUSE HILL (MUNGERIE PARK) TRANSITWAY

Opened in March 2007, which is actually ahead of the schedule they set

PARRAMATTA - STRATHFIELD TRANSITWAY

Still on the drawing board, despite the touted 2002 opening date

PENRITH TO ST MARYS TRANSITWAY

Still on the drawing board, despite the touted 2008 opening date

EASTERN DISTRIBUTOR

Built.

M5 EAST

Built.

WESTERN SYDNEY ORBITAL

Built.

M2 TO GORE HILL

Built.

METROAD 7 (CUMBERLAND HIGHWAY)

Built.

CROSS CITY TUNNEL

Built, gona broke.

PARRAMATTA ROAD

Built, still a nightmare road.

PRINCES HIGHWAY

Built, still a nightmare road.

VICTORIA ROAD

Built, still congested.

MILITARY ROAD

Partially built

TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT

Built. Didn't help congestion.

So do you see the pattern? All the road projects got built. A couple of the public transport project got built, partically, and mostly with private money.

I've just had a very bizarre exchange with Rodney Gedda from IDG, a big magazine and book publisher. I used to write for some IDG publications and was, briefly, editor of a micro-magazine they had, Online World which became Webmaster.

Anyway, Rodney opens with: I'm interested in running more technical content on IDG's online network. Please contact me if you are interested in contributing. I presume he'd found my writing on one of the Planets, probably after reading my comments about Joel Spolsky's latest piece.

A little flattered, and always wanting to keep my hand in IT journalism stuff, I followed it up with some questions and proposals. In my dealings with IDG in the past, I've been pretty shocked by what they insist you sign over before paying you, perpetual, universal rights basically. So I brought this up and he suggested IDG own the copy and I get "perpetual publicity and bragging rights". Hmmm.

I came straight out and asked if this was a paying gig. Unfrotunately I don't have a budget for that yet, but you'll get free publicity. Meh.

When I write for a corporation, I want a lot more than publicity. Some help paying the mortgage would be nice. You'd be using my knowledge, experience and work to enrich a giant corporation. Err, no. I don't think Patrick McGovern needs my charity.

Those of you out there also receiving offers like this, be aware that your work is worth something. At the minimum, you might use something like this to get your foot in the door and have some publications you can point to, but you certainly wouldn't be signing away perpetual and universal rights to your work!

For the record, my writing is available, for a fee.

I imagine most of you reading this blog already read Joel on Software, but today's post is destined to be a classic. Joel worked at Microsoft on the Excel team from 1991 to 1995, where he clearly learnt a lot about programming in the real world, with real world pragmatism and real world ugly hacks. His writings are always a good antidote to assuming that Microsoft is the evil empire, intent on owning the world. In reality, it's a bumbling megacorp making sensible, rational decisions that end up hurting someone, somewhere no matter which way the decision goes.

Today's post is about the war between the web standards sticklers and the poor saps who have to implement browsers. It's a really hilarious description of why standards aren't the panacea, and why writing useful stuff for the web is hard.

I have a sneaking suspicion that his prediction that IE8 will revert to buggy IE7 mode by default before release is spot on. But at least in the meantime enough web developers will notice that their pages are broken and fix them.

Me? I'm pushing the change to our site tonight that will force IE7 rendering mode, because I don't have time to fix the buggy behaviour just now. Pragmatic, but I hate it. However, you try telling your boss you need to spend a week hunting down tiny little bugs caused by a software upgrade that's a few months away from being out in the real world.

Oh how the mighty fall! Who would have thought I'd find myself subscribing to something called Marketing Experiments Journal. I bet the use of the word "Journal" makes the marketers quiver with scientifitude. Sounds much more white coat than "newsletter" doesn't it?

I feel dirty. And not the nice kind.

Like most houses built before the 1970s, our house almost certainly has lead paint. Given the number of layers on the paint around the windows and door frames, I'd guarantee there's lead paint there. The rest of the house, well that's anyone's guess. So I've been researching how I can test for it, and then what you do with it.

My family have been remarkably cavalier about lead when renovating in the past. Reading more about it tells me this is insanity. Lead contamination is extremely dangerous and pernicious. It's also very hard to get rid of -- the procedures for DIY lead removal are intense, to say the least, and I imagine professional lead removal isn't cheap.

It seems the spot test kits aren't particularly reliable, and of course only tell you there is lead, not how much or how dangerous. The best method is a field-based X-ray fluorescence test, accompanied by soil and dust sampling. I'm trying to find a place that can do this assessment.

After identifying lead paint, the really hard decisions start. If all our skirting boards, window and door frames are contaminated, is it easier and cheaper to replace them? What about if it's on the walls? Ceiling cavity? This is why I'm going to engage some professionals to get advice on all these difficult decisions.

I guess at the end of the day it'll be peace of mind. We often have little kids around the place, crawling over the floors. And we intend to have our own kids some time. Lead is a really serious matter, so we'll have to take it seriously.

Anyone else got experience with old, contaminated houses?

We're making progress with the bathroom. Phil's finished up yesterday, with all the fixtures in. Follow the link to see some photos. Today we sanded and painted the undercoat layer. During the week we'll finish it off and put in things like the towel rail and bog roll holder.

The sliding door gives the room an enormous amount more space, and the fixtures we bought are spectacular. The sky light is great and, even after losing a window, it's really sunny in there. Really happy with how it's looking.

Holly, Mikey and I were quite excited to be seeing M83 last night, ostensibly supporting Midnight Juggernauts at the Enmore. Unfortunately, his band's gear was all somewhere between Paris and Sydney, so they couldn't play. Instead, he played stuff off his laptop, which was hardly a substitute.

We weren't particularly interested in the Sisters of Mercy/Gary Numan stylings of the Juggernauts -- they're okay but we've seen them before -- so we left. And the enormous number of kids was kinda annoying too. We must be getting old.

Now I'll have to go through the hassle of trying to get a refund. Though if we get that, I can justify seeing Ozomatli next weekend.

We're into the second week of being without a bathroom as it gets gutted and re-done. Everything has come out and we're getting there. Gyprock went on yesterday, so tiling and plumbing in the appliances shouldn't be too far away, hopefully.

It's gonna be lovely when it's done, but for now we're imposing on our mates as the house is toilet-less.

I, like many others amongst you, have to run the bloated abomination that is Microsoft Outlook at work. It's been quite annoying, as I've really got used to my personal Google Calendar being synced to my phone via Goosync, which has been a real productivity improvement for me. However my work calendar has been left on the desktop, or I could get it logging into the Outlook web access thing from home, but hardly as portable as my phone.

Enter Google Calendar Sync, just released it seems. This periodically syncs your Outlook calendar with Google Calendar. So now my work calendar is on my phone. Brilliant!

One niggle for me is that there's no option to configure which Google Calendar it syncs with, just using your primary calendar. This is annoying as I'd like to separate my work calendar out, so I don't end up with personal items cluttering my work calendar at work, and I can show/hide the work calendar when I'm not interested in work.

Still, as usual I'm sure Google will be responsive to feature requests and that feature will come sooner or later.